Benghazi committee says Hillary used multiple personal email accounts

The House committee investigating the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi will issue new requests to Hillary Clinton for emails from multiple personal accounts she used during her tenure as secretary of state.

Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) told reporters on Tuesday that lawyers for the Benghazi Committee would be issuing the new requests - which he didn’t rule out could come in the form of subpoenas - to Clinton and her email providers in the coming weeks.

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“It was not as if she had both an official and a private email account. She did not use personal email in addition to government email. She used personal email in lieu of government email,” Gowdy said. “And she had more than one private email account.”

“The State Department cannot certify that have produced all of former Secretary Clinton’s emails because they do not have all of former Secretary Clinton’s emails nor do they control access to them,” he said.

Gowdy’s committee in probing what happened on Sept. 11, 2012 at the Benghazi consulate where four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, were killed by Islamic extremists. The panel has long-sought emails from Clinton’s Start Department tenure to understand how the Obama administration reacted to the security concerns before and after the attacks.

The committee, Gowdy said, has known since last summer that Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic Party’s 2016 nomination, used personal email addresses while serving as secretary. He said the committee has worked with Clinton advisers and the department to gain access to documents relating to the Benghazi attacks.

The New York Times first reported Monday night that Clinton used a personal email address for official State Department business - creating a potential violation of federal rules that mandate correspondences be retained.

The Federal Records Act requires government official keep copies of official correspondence on federal servers, which State Department employees failed to do with Clinton’s records. The New York Times reported that Clinton advisers began turning over those emails to the State Department two months ago.

Gowdy said the 300 emails Clinton advisors made available to the Benghazi Committee were never made available to the half dozen other congressional committees that have investigated the attacks in Libya. He added that lawyers for the committee would soon be sending “preservation” letters to Clinton, her advisors and email providers to ensure that the emails are retained.

“You do not need a law degree to have an understanding of how troubling this is. There are chain of custody issues, there are preservation of material and documents issues [and] there spoliation of evidence issues,” Gowdy said. “One should also be concerned about the national security implications of former Secretary Clinton of using exclusively personal email accounts for the conducting of official U.S. foreign policy.”

Gowdy said the news that Clinton may not have properly saved her State Department correspondences may require the panel to have Clinton appear more than once.

Clinton privately told Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the panel, she was willing to testify before the Benghazi panel as early as last fall, but Gowdy has said was putting off her appearances until the panel received all of the emails requested.

Cummings called on Gowdy earlier Tuesday to release the emails from Clinton.

“Although Secretary Clinton has produced her emails to the State Department, it is unclear from press reports whether previous Secretaries have done the same. Last month, the Committee received Secretary Clinton’s emails relating to Benghazi, and now that we have them, I believe Chairman Gowdy should join with me to make them available to the American public so they can read their contents for themselves,” the Maryland Democrat said in a statement.